Sex Ed for Youngsters

So far, I have been thrilled with our choice to homeschool Elijah this year. The other day, I had food poisoning and could not even fathom getting out of bed for any other reason but to hug that porcelain bowl. I needed two full days in bed to recoup! Getting my wild boys dressed and off to school would NOT have been an option!

We are almost done with our first 12 weeks of school (taking a break near the end of October) and things are going well. Every two weeks, we've been doing unit studies, mostly on a subject Elijah is interested in. The next two weeks, we will focus on childbirth and I'm so excited!!

To set the scene (and answer some pretty big questions about reproduction!), we bought these two books:

Amazing you!

This book is a great way to broach the topic of privacy, while also giving your curious kids and opportunity to learn about the other gender in a safe way. There is one page I do not like and I actually changed the words, ha! Otherwise, it's great and I highly recommend it for ages 4-6 yrs.

It's Not the Stork!  is another great book about anatomy, conception, growing babies and childbirth. This one is detailed and reads more like a text book. It's also silly at times and definitely engages children where they are at. I love how scientific it is! We aren't reading straight through it, but will go through pages 30-44 over the next two weeks which strictly cover conception and childbirth.

We also picked up a few easy picture books about babies in the womb (I think one of them was called "Ma, There's Nothing to do in Here!", ha!!), new siblings in your family and my favorite children's book on homebirth "Welcome with Love".

Dan and I often make last minute decisions about things like school, sex education, and other topics and rules. I'm not sure why we are like this, especially since I am naturally a planner. We do however, strongly believe in telling our children the truth and giving solid answers to their questions. Responding with "you're too young, we'll talk about it when you get older" is not really an option for us. Elijah wants answers NOW and honestly, I think if his mind is mature enough to think about such subjects, then he's mature enough to learn about them. Sex education is something that has started pretty early in our house, but I know it will be an ongoing conversation; one that continues to grow in depth and understanding as our boys grow.

Over time, Dan will take over such conversations as things become more complicated. For now, it's been fun walking the boys through this pregnancy and teaching them about the miracle of love and childbirth and God's plan in creation!!